[157] Strutt's Sports and pastimes of the people of England, p. 171.
[158] Hist. of Musick, vol. iv. 388, by Sir John Hawkins, who was clearly of opinion that the morris dance was derived from the Moors.
[159] Etymologicum Anglicanum. In further corroboration of this deduction of the morris dance, the following words may be adduced; MORESQUE a kind of grotesque painting, sometimes called Arabesque, and used in embroidery and damasking. Moriscle, and MOURICLE, a gold coin used in Spain by the Moors, and called in the barbarous Latin of the fourteenth century morikinus. See Carpentier, Suppl. ad glossar. Ducangian. v. Morikinus. Morris wax, called likewise mores wax, in the Garbelling of spices, 1594, 4to. To these the morris-pike may perhaps be added. It is probable that the English terms morris and morice have been corrupted from mores, the older and more genuine orthography.
[160] Tabourot Orchesographie, 1589, 4to, p. 97, where the several postures of this dance are described and represented. The Pyrrhic dance appears to have travelled from Greece into the north. See Olaus Magnus, De gentibus septentrionalibus, lib. xv. c. 23, 24, 25, 26, 27.
[161] It is remarkable that the same practice should be found in the island of Ceylon. Knox tells us that "A woman takes two naked swords, under each arm one, and another she holds in her mouth, then fetcheth a run and turns clean over, and never touches the ground till she lights on her feet again holding all her swords fast."—Hist. of Ceylon, p. 99.
[162] Wise's Enquiries concerning the first inhabitants, language, &c. of Europe, p. 51.
[163] Jean Tabourot, canon and official of the cathedral of Lengres, published his Orchesographie et traicté en forme de dialogue par lequel toutes personnes peuvent facilement apprendre et practiquer l'honneste exercice des dances, 1589, 4to, under the anagrammatized name of Thoinot Arbeau. He died in 1595, at the age of 66. His work is equally curious and uncommon.
[164] But the French morris can be traced to a much earlier period. Among other instances of the prodigality of Messire Gilles de Raiz, in 1440, morris dancers are specified. Lobineau, Hist. de Bretagne, ii. 1069. In the accounts of Olivier le Roux, treasurer to Arthur III. duke of Bretagne in 1457, is this article: "à certains compaignons qui avoient fait plusieurs esbatemens de morisques et autres jeux devant le due à Tours, vi. escus."—Id. 1205. At a splendid feast given by Gaston de Foix at Vendôme in 1458, "foure yong laddes and a damosell attired like savages daunced (by good direction) an excellent Morisco, before the assembly."—Favines Theater of honour, p. 345; and see Carpentier, Suppl. ad glossar. Ducangian. v. Morikinus. Coquillart, a French poet, who wrote about 1470, says that the Swiss danced the Morisco to the beat of the drum. Œuvres, p. 127.
[165] Peck's Memoirs of Milton, 135. What this writer has added on the subject of the morris dance is not very interesting; but he is certainly mistaken in his explanation of five, seven, or nine men's morris.
[166] Ritson's Robin Hood, I. cii.